


Sivafied

by ImperfectSilence



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Don't overthink (unless you're into that), Hints of a lot of nasty stuff, Not Canon Compliant with Beyond Light, Other, SIVA (Destiny) - Freeform, pseudoreligious approach to the traveler
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:21:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26829556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImperfectSilence/pseuds/ImperfectSilence
Summary: Defending an obscure Rasputin Bunker, she gets thrown into a storage room of not quite dormant SIVA. Consume, Enhance, Error!
Kudos: 6





	Sivafied

Moon’s haunted. That’s all the advance scouts had been able to tell us when they returned, those who made it back. They shared stories of what could only be described as nightmares, ghosts and monsters roaming the lunar mare. Green chasms of burning hive fire, and a brief glimpse of a dark pyramid in the shadows of the red tower.

When the Vanguard committed, when they heeded Eris’ warnings and sent in the guardians, reinforced with frames and ships- we carved out a beachhead and it still almost wasn’t enough. The nightmares the scouts told us of came- unstoppable creatures of the darkness, wrapped in unbreakable shields or unyielding and bearing down on the light with fearless dominion. The powers of the dark twisted their magics, their technologies, overpowered and over clocked the ability- there was nothing we could do but die. Was this to be like the last guardians offensive on the moon? Was this what facing Crota had been like for those desperate few who stood long enough to face him directly?

It seemed all was lost until the Guardian dragged out a hive artifact. You know the one, it’s impossible not to. Hivebane, Godslayer. Vex Breaker, Kell Culler. The Hero of the Last City. They brought in something that could empower us; that could combat the nightmares and monsters. There were precious few, but infusing them to our weapons, tucking them into the pocket of our armor we could fight back the demons. And we did.

But the hive’s magics never last, and our arms began to fail once more. The twisting powers of the darkness were pushing us back as our supplies dwindled. It seemed all was lost when Osiris called us to Mercury, having pulled something from the corridors of time. It was fantastical, Vex or merely advanced from a different timeline, whatever the source it saved us once more. We could stave off the minions of the darkness for a bit longer, hold out for a while more. Maybe long enough to find a way to defeat them and stop the transformation, their ascension. Saint XIV returned to us, dragged from the timelines by the guardian again, but he had no answers. His light, while strong, still couldn’t pierce the darkness.

But the corridors of time were unstable, and the grip of the red legion shattered the tenuous bridge Osiris forged, and wherever the armaments were coming from they were lost; the connection broken.

And again when we had our back to the wall Rasputin rumbled and shouted, indecipherable and overwhelming. Ana translated for us, and he shared his hidden bounty with us, unlocked another of his caches tucked away for the storm. Again we could fight them back, and so here I was, running through one of his bunkers, pushing the fallen back.

But this is my story, and you know what’s going on out there.

It began in the bombed out ruins of North America, revived by what would become my ghost in the bottom of a crumbling crater. Whatever happened here had devastated the region, pushed a hole in the earth miles deep. I was on the lip of the hole, buried by a fallen apartment building. No clean exit, trapped as I was under an I-beam. As I pushed and struggled to get out from under it the floor to my right crumbled, pieces of tile breaking off and falling. I couldn’t hear them hit anything, just drop off into the dark.

I did manage to crawl out without falling, but much of the building tumbled down around me. I wandered the twisted streets, caught in a permanent haze. My ghost rezzed me with everything it could find- but there was precious little the elements had not stripped. There was one pieces of my past, and though Biro, my ghost, advised me leave it behind, I grabbed it. It was a badge, a symbol really.

Search and Rescue Division 12, unit 8.

We wandered, searching for transport, for anything to help us get to the City. A redjack patrol found us and brought us in, and that was the end of that. Ikora told me I was one of hers, a warlock. She pushed me into the care of some of the senior warlocks and they guided me though finding and harnessing my light. Combat training went okay, but it soon became apparent that I had no special gift for destruction. Instead, my mind was suited for patterns and assimilation. I was asked to join a research and recovery team, just in time for SIVA to break out.

SIVA was a beast of an enemy, but was quite sad in reality. It was a source of materials, a replication engine that was out of control. A tool so powerful that it was used as a weapon. But no matter how we tried we couldn’t tame it. It resisted all efforts to contain or control it. In the end our project ended in failure, and we defeated.

I was in the Manhattan Nuclear Zone when the Red legion struck. There were rumors that the weapons cache Saint-XIV found had another subsection, one full of technology repositories and infobanks. I got in without any problems, but a day in my ghost died. There weren’t any enemies that I found, and I was immune to the radiation, so I just pressed on.

By the end of the red war I knew every inch of that bunker. There was a hidden subsection, but it was not full of advanced technology and golden age secrets- instead it was full of art and artifacts. Or, it had been. I wasn’t gentle when I broke through the security measures, and the rapid exposure to hundreds of years of air and change was too much for most of the artifacts stored within. Art was mildewed and artifacts crumbled as the air swept in. The shaking from the explosives I used tossed devices from their pedestals and cracked others through. It was a disaster. Of course, that’s when my light came back.

I returned to the city and helped as best I could. The Vanguard tasked me to try and find people- when the red legion attacked people fled in every direction. Someone had to find those enclaves and guide them back home. With my old badge still tucked away in my bags, it was a job I felt suited for.

I was good at finding people and getting them home. It was quiet, thankless work, but it was good for me. Up until the word came that the last city was threatened once again. The almighty was plummeting toward us. Of course, the first question after was what the hell is the almighty?

After scanning through the declassified packet attached to the call, I signed on to help.

The bunker I had been assigned was in the backwoods of the EDZ, a hidden cave reclaimed by the forests. It went unnoticed for the first few weeks, but then Fallen found us. Their first assault we barely repelled, Rasputin calling up frames to assist me as I cycled through guns, trying to hold them off.

We managed that time, and so far every time after that, but the tome between raids was shrinking more and more. Apparently they thought this was a weak link in the warmind chain of storage and destruction.

We were up to a crew in every day or so trying to pry out whatever they could. Filthy thieves and scavengers- that someone had to clean out. Rasputin could do it, of course, but that required pieces and parts that were in scarce supply. Far easier to just do it yourself. The moment I swept in from my camp, I knew something was off. The main entrance was still closed, but the alarm on my pad was still going off. They had gotten inside, but not through the front. Hopping back on my sparrow, I roared through the trees around the exterior, searching for their hole.

I found it the same time I found the walker. This was the first time they brought artillery in, and I was not at all prepared. I did my best to beat back the raiding crew, darting between boxes and sliding around tunnels to dodge grenades and arc blasts. Four captains and two servitors lead however many dregs and vandals and marauders in, augmented of course by shanks. It was a nightmare, an unending tide of arc blasts and swords swiping at me. The frames tried to draw their fire and did, but I was giving ground. The entire substructure was pith black, and my ghost couldn’t light anything up or I’d be lit up from a dozen angles. I was in the middle of reloading my fusion after gunning down a trio of skirmishers who had been crawling on the ceiling when the walker got a bead on me. Or enough to send a blast from its cannon down the tunnel.

The blast hit the ground in front of me, and though I wrapped my light around me to soften the blow it wasn’t enough. I was sent flying, crashing though the weakened wall into the darkness beyond. I don’t know how long I flew through the air, tossed by the blast and dazed. I hit something metal and crashed through, rolling over what felt like cables. Maybe this was one of Rasputin’s access tunnels, and I could charge right back up the slope into the fight. But, as I breathed and sat up, there was nothing to make out. Cautiously I ran power to my hand, not a lot, just enough to get the lights to turn on. In the dim red glow, I saw the black cable my hand was resting on, but on the edge of the light I saw the true horror. Red pyramids on the black cables. I tried to cut the power, but I couldn’t. Something was overriding the commands. My vision flickered and the pyramid slowly started to glow. In its light I saw another few, and then, spreading out from where I had landed, the whole room began to light up. I had not landed in a narrow access way, but instead a great storehouse. A storehouse full of Siva. The nanotech spread from wall to wall, clinging to the ceiling and looping down to meet the floor in giant twisted strands. The light pulsed and I saw the way I came from, high up by the ceiling, the catwalk twisted and hanging from where I punched through.

I tried to pull my hand back but I couldn’t, and looking down, I saw the worst. A small tendril of black wire feeding into the back of my hand, threading through the glove and armor to the circuitry within. The steady lines of diagnostic that had always been in the corner of my eye started throwing up errors started corrupting. Senses faded in and out as the Siva spread.

**CONSUME.**

Painted across my vision in bright red letters, and everything below my central strut shut down. By breathing grew quicker as panic rushed through my circuits. I was going to die here, alone in some lost bunker. One day some guardian would find us, and they’d have to kill my possessed body and shut down my light.

Static washed over my vision before it came back, pins down my fingers and sparks from my exposed wires. The steady thrum and pulsation of the Siva in the chamber grew as it twisted my insides, rewrote functions and enhanced. As it ate my circuits for its own power, for its own directive.

It wasn’t even malicious. This was what it had been asked to do, the directives it had been given. Its commands were to take, to improve and to spread.

Be fruitful and multiply. Consume, enhance, replicate.

The black lines grew over my legs and hands, twining up my arms and across my chest. They nudged under plating and around wire bundles. Leapt from NFC points to others and spread. My fear and terror climaxed as it spread over my mouth plates and eyes, a node line punched through the back of my skullplate and into the synthoneural brain within.

It was… warm. Soft. Features foreign to an exo, since we lacked physical touch. We could scan something, could analyze it. Break down the materials and the weave and the tensility and give and a hundred other facts, but never would we really know if it was soft. Or warm. There were always whispers of what the city smelled like, since we sensed something, but was that what every non-exo did too? Was ramen spicy or sweet? Was our definition of spicy the same as a human’s or awoken’s? What did the world around us really feel like?

If this was the end, the ascension to the mainframe, then it was pleasant enough. No hard reboot or starts, no jostle and error codes and shut down states. No numbness and lack of response, no servo lag. It felt nice.

(Outside, the body had been cocooned by the Siva, wrapped and dragged into a dense node of the nanotech.)

A nudge at my feet, and I opened my eyes- only to gasp. It was bright, but not too bright. Warm light, formless shone on us. A tendril of Siva was sliding up my side, gentle and soft as it prodded at the plates, scanned the fragmented armor.

(Sparks and bits of metal flew and fell and showered as the frame was ripped apart, the bits falling ruthlessly reclaimed by the Siva below and funneled back up to the rebuild)

The Siva brushed across my chest and for the first time I gasped and thrust my chest into the feeling, responding instinctively like every human or awoken who I had seen like this. It was warm and soft, but firm and the slip-sliding across my chest felt good in a way nothing ever had before. Sensors and nerves sang as it tensed and flexed, curving around the synthmetal underneath my chest plate grasping and squeezing carefully.

(Audible cracks and shrieks came from the node of Siva, now 40 feet across as it drained energy and reformatted, shredded and rebuilt stronger, better.)

Another tendril of the living machine twisted up one leg, slipping under the plating and over my navel to the curvature of my chest to join on the other side. But even as it slid and grinded, it didn’t stop slipping up. Over the shoulder and lazily looping around my neck. It caresses one cheek, gently probing and exploring, redefining. My left boot fell off and another line of code crawled under the greaves, slipping up the leg in loose but firm coils to push above the waist of my armor.

(The Siva shuddered and halted everything for a moment before exploding up, tendrils and growth drilling through steel and concrete into the room the fallen had broken into, sprouting from the floor. It drilled into the walker and broke into the computers running it before it became the walker, casually venting the superheated plasma into the internal compartments, killing the fallen within. Another branch spiked out to snag a servitor but it blinked away, only to brush an outlet by the wall- the jolt of power from the electrical grid was more than enough for Siva to ride and the Servitor stalled, hitting the ground with a loud thump, rolling a bit before its red and black tether stopped it. The other fallen fought against the tide of technology, shooting into the nanites and swinging swords into the streams, disrupting the flow.)

As if a switch had been flipped, I arced up. Suddenly I was aflame, desire burning through my primary lines like it never had before. Heat pooling in my lower tanks, electric current flowing on lines that had long burned out from disuse. Another swarm of nanites crawled up from my hip and I writhed as they crossed my body teasing and tickling. A tight coil of Siva flattened and slid up my leg armor before thickening and cracking through the plate, pieces of dense heavy armor falling into the aether. The other lines of Siva on me flexed and did the same, shredding and dearmoring my frame. I was exposed to the SIVA, to the nanotech, aloft in the warm and soft drift of light, the tender pulsing tightening and stroking along my psuedoskin. Something was building, onlining, like a massive file being generated deep within my processor.

(The Siva would not be deterred, and quickly the fallen raiding party was eliminated, consumed by the unfeeling and unflinching directives. They were broken down, harvested, the information stored on their machines assimilated. The Servitor blinked back to life and rose back up, the cable detaching as red spikes burst from the top of its shell. The purple eye blinked red, armor stretching out to pull nanites in.)

Something brushed between my legs, and I hissed in air, bucking at my restraints unable to decide if I wanted to run from it or seek more of it. The press grew firmer as the tendrils tightened, holding me firm as it stroked around the apex of my thighs, caressing and activating the sensor networks. I felt on fire as the feeling spread, as shocks jumped along my pathways, sensors firing and activating and screaming at my processor. Cooling fans kicked on but did nothing at all to alleviate the feeling as the Siva brushed again over the delicate circuitry and synthflesh only to hold fast and gently push past the barriers into me.

It was indescribable. Words to explain the feeling do not exist in my databanks, have never been written or designed for the sensations crawling through my synaptic arrays. Awash on a flood of pleasurable sensation, of affirmation code and achieved directives, a consuming sensation of rightness and good and- the cable thrust in and out, writhing and seething as it accessed databanks, prototypes, crawled through hidden caches and forgotten accesses. Ancient networks sparked to life as it searched and devoured and replicated and reimagined and repaired and-

**ENHANCE.**

I shook in the Siva pod as something overrode my gears and pistons, as sparks ricocheted from my exposure places, as the Siva continued to pump into me both data and sensation and physically. As I was overridden by its directives, as I let myself be taken away on the flood of okay, and right. As I let my mind forget the light and the fallen and the hive and everything. As the Siva buries me in an ocean of itself. Stars were born and died inside the Siva’s protective grasp. Universes bloomed and withered away, spun and counterspun. It was glorious and fantastical and-

**ERROR!**

I came to on the steel and stone floor of the bunker, a giant flashing error in front of my eyes. Accessing my databanks I recognized the fault in the code and flagged it before disabling the error alert and sitting up. It was dark, lit only by dim lighting from down the hall. I dragged myself to my feet and stumbled forward, one hand on the wall to stay vertical. My head spun and more errors flashed up, but all of them minor. I had burned circuits, overloaded capacitors. Cracks and damage to my primary frame. My armor was in tatters, my weapons cracked and malfunctioning. Reaching for the light, I found even that difficult, though I had never been the best disciple anyway. I wandered back to the main room, looking at the massive data cluster that was Rasputin.

“Ugh, Rasputin? Do you know what happened?” I asked, not expecting a response. He didn’t reply any other time I had breached conversation, so it was to great shock when the walls shook from his bass voice.

“Хорошая работа, которую вы можете прочитать.”

Unable to understand him, I nevertheless thanked him and looked to the wall display. The red dots representing the pyramid ships kept getting closer. They were almost to Uranus, but they were decelerating if the calculations were correct. Slowing so they wouldn’t overshoot whatever their target was. I watched the display for a few rotations as I caught my breath.

Comms were down, I found out when I tried to schedule a repair appointment at the tower. Grumbling I walked toward the bunker exit, but caught my reflection in one of the old monitors. I froze.

The exo reflected in the glass couldn’t be me, but it was. There was no blue paint, scuffed and scraped by collapsing debris, no impact bending or weld marks, no sensor antenna. Instead, my face was black, with red eyes and lights. Black bumps grew from the side of my head- black and red pyramid bumps. I raced for the exit, calling up my ghost as I took the stairs as fast as I could. I burst out of the bunker-

My ghost wasn’t there. My ghost wasn’t anywhere. But, I could feel the light, could feel the transmitter, could feel everything. I offlined my eyes and focused, pinging my internal network. Comms, primary sensors, secondary sensors, motors, communication, and storage all pinged back, if damaged. But more than just those responded.

Transmat, sparrowlink, vault access, and a firewall.

I pushed the firewall, felt the edges to try and figure out what had created it and what it was protecting. It was strong, but I was curious, and eventually I found a weakness. I slipped under the firewall and onto the other side. Whatever it was the firewall was hiding, it was massive and bright. Too bright. My probe was constrained by the size of the tunnel I had dug, but from this side I could open the gate on the firewall. I was sure I could understand what this was if I had full processor access and so I unlocked the gate and pushed it open.

Oh. As the gate swung wide, light rushed in, rushed through. It swept the damage away, strengthening struts, greasing pistons, reconnecting dead lines. I onlined my optics again and pulled my sparrow out of transmat.

I had to report to the tower immediately. Something had either gone very, very wrong, or very right, and I had no idea which.

On the other side of the firewall was a god. On the other side was the traveler, and I had opened a connection to it. If only for a moment, I saw the face of god.

And I wept.


End file.
